Today's Vic

Lauren Boebert may be headed for a crash. Charlie Cook has moved this race from Likely Red to Leans Red.

The Problem Of Late Deciders

I think most "undecideds" are rationalizing the fact that they don't pay attention, or they just follow the crowd, or they go with whatever sign they see last before they vote ... or they're straight up lying for whatever reason.

Conventional wisdom says there are actual honest-to-god people who wait forever to make a decision.

Two basic kinds of undecided voters, and they can be persuaded.

• I'm definitely gonna vote, but I'm not sure I'll vote for you
• I'm not sure I'm gonna vote, but if I do, I'll definitely vote for you

I've said it before - this can't be considered just another election where it doesn't really matter who we put in charge. It does matter. A lot.

In another demonstration of CNN's toxic neutrality, Tapper lets Johnson lie his ass off, and he never once questions the guy's evasions and word safaris and recitation of GOP ad copy.

And more - Mike Johnson is a believer in The Second Coming - something Christians have been predicting for 2000 years. Why the fuck would anybody put any stock in his predictions for an election?

Turned Another'n

Fed up with MAGA bullshit, a former FL GOP Chair goes public for Harris.

Former Florida GOP chair backs Harris after Helene ‘trolling’

The former head of the Florida Republican Party said he’s supporting Vice President Harris after “trolling” from other Republicans over the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene.

Al Cárdenas said in his appearance Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that natural disasters have “always been a bipartisan issue.”

“Both Democrats and Republicans have worked together to assist the people in harm’s way,” Cárdenas added. “Well, you know, the White House asked Congress to pass a bill to — a supplemental bill — to really help people with these disasters, because we may be running outta cash. All of a sudden, the trolling, the Trump operatives and everybody else started saying, ‘Well, they’re giving that money to illegal immigrants.’ Not true.”

Republicans, including former President Trump have gone after the federal response to Hurricane Helene. Last week, at a rally in Saginaw, Mich., the former president said the response “is going even worse” than Hurricane Katrina.

“A certain president, I will not name him, destroyed his reputation with Katrina,” Trump said of former President George W. Bush. “And this is going even worse. She’s doing even worse than he did.”

Cárdenas said in his appearance on “Morning Joe” that he believes “Harris and [Tim] Walz may not necessarily be my ideal ticket, but they’re not gonna put America in harm’s way.”

“And so I made an easy decision for me,” the former Sunshine State GOP head said.

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It’s not surprising that Cárdenas would back Harris as he has been a critic of Trump in the past, once saying in a post on the social platform X back in 2018 that the president is “a despicable divider; the worse social poison to afflict our country in decades” in response to a campaign ad from Trump on immigration.

“This ad, and your full approval of it, will condemn you and your bigoted legacy forever in the annals of America’s history books,” Cárdenas continued in the post.

The Hill has reached out to the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign.

Today's Belle

Republicans keep nominating assholes who don't give one empty fuck about the people they purport to represent.

Let them talk in a venue they apparently think of as a safe space, and they show their ass every time.

DEMOCRATS KNOW

THEY'RE CALLED TO SERVE

REPUBLICANS BELIEVE

THEY'RE ENTITLED TO RULE

Fact Check

It's always hard to compare performances, but there are ways to weight and un-weight the stats to get a pretty fair analysis

This comparison seems to lean pretty hard towards the conclusion that Democrats are better at handling the economy.

About The Unity Theme

I get it, Democrats. I get it, Republicans. I get it, Libertarians and Independents and Greenies and Progressives and all y'all.

Honest - I fuckin' get it. We have to be able to look past our differences and figure out how to make common cause.

And I want to do that, and I swear to fake Jesus I've been trying. 

I even have "faith" that we'll get back there, and I'm holding out hope we can all kiss and make up before I'm dead and gone.

But let me echo some of what came thru over the last few days at the DNC Convention:

• This is a fight that pits the principles of democratic self-governance against a very hard push towards a corporate-style plutocracy.
• The other side isn't talking about going back the 1950s, or the 1850s. They're trying to drag us back to the 1750s - when there was a landed gentry that held all the wealth, all the privilege, and all the power, and everybody else stayed put and took whatever the bosses dished out

If we're arguing the relative merits of raising the earnings cap to better fund Social Security, and we can both agree that jiggering the tax code is the way to go - or maybe making it more means-dependent or whatever - and we're just haggling over the details on how to get it done so people are better cared for, then we're good.

But if I'm up against somebody who insists on privatizing it and turning it over to Wall Street,

and he won't let go of his "tax-n-spend libruls are agents of the devil" bullshit,

and he seems not to care what happens to old people (hey, they shoulda planned better),

don't expect me to play nice with that fuckin' yahoo.

So there can be reconciliation, but not without acknowledgement that what MAGA has been trying to do is to follow Grover Norquist's prescription - to shrink the government (ie: whittle away at democracy) so it would eventually be small enough to drown it in the bathtub.

Putting it a slightly different way:

Telling me you regret voting for Trump is like

telling me you're sorry you fucked my dog.

I can be charitable enough to forgive,

and we can talk it through,

and we can move on.

But here's the thing:

You will always be that guy

who was going around

fuckin' people's dogs. 

Good Reason

The Dissonance Will Be Resolved

People love what "the far left agenda" does for them, and Republicans can't stand that, even though they're in favor of practically everything the Dems are doing - feeding school kids, building roads and bridges, clean drinking water, etc. But their brand is all about hating the thought of people feeling happy and safe and secure.

Not all cognitive dissonance can be or should be totally resolved - we need a little duality to keep us thinking, and on our toes. But when it becomes obvious that one political side wants us to live in peace and to thrive in a system that treats people fairly, while the other side is constantly manufacturing threats that drive paranoia, and divide us into smaller and smaller groups in order to set us against each other - that kind of dissonance is poisonous, and we have to beat it down.

Dammit

That Pete Guy

Pete Buttigieg needs to be in charge of teaching Democrats how to stomp on Republicans.

Hey, Republicans - if you want your party back, vote for Harris.

Today's Wingnuts

They're not fuckin' around. These assholes are very influential, and they're talking openly about ruling - crushing their enemies - rewarding their friends.

The only difference between these jagoffs and the Taliban is the brand name.

Democrats know they're called to serve.

Republicans think they're entitled to rule.

Unification

I'm not crazy about delivering too much power into too few hands.

I think I have to make an exception in the face of what "conservatives" are trying to accomplish, so Harris in the White House, Jefferies as Speaker, and Schumer as Majority Leader is a risk worth taking.

Remember

Keep in mind who this Trump asshole really is, as the Press Poodles try to force us to watch their favorite blood sport (ie: manufacturing "controversy" - putting red ants and black ants in a great big pickle jar, and charging an admission fee to see them fight).

The stuttering old man who knows his shit, and tries to tell me as much of the truth as he can without fucking up national security?  He's my guy all day every day.

Versus that other old man who can't express a coherent thought without taking a giant dump on everybody's head? No fucking thanks. Leave it and walk away.

I'll take a crippled up FDR over assholes like Mussolini and Stalin and Putin and Trump every time.

Donald Trump and fascism

Some scholars have argued that the political style of Donald Trump resembles the political style of fascist leaders. Such assessments were first made during Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, continuing over the course of the Trump presidency as he appeared to court far-right extremists, including his attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election after losing to Joe Biden, and culminating in the 2021 United States Capitol attack.[44] As these events have unfolded, some commentators who had initially resisted applying the label to Trump came out in favor of it, including conservative legal scholar Steven G. Calabresi and conservative commentator Michael Gerson. After the attack on the Capitol, one historian of fascism, Robert O. Paxton, went so far as to state that Trump is a fascist, despite his earlier objection to using the term in this way. In "Trump and the Legacy of a Menacing Past", Henry Giroux wrote: "The inability to learn from the past takes on a new meaning as a growing number of authoritarian regimes emerge across the globe. This essay argues that central to understanding the rise of a fascist politics in the United States is the necessity to address the power of language and the intersection of the social media and the public spectacle as central elements in the rise of a formative culture that produces the ideologies and agents necessary for an American-style fascism." Other historians of fascism such as Richard J. Evans, Roger Griffin, and Stanley Payne continue to disagree that fascism is an appropriate term to describe Trump's politics. Jason Stanley argued (2018) Trump uses "fascist techniques to excite his base and erode liberal democratic institutions."

In 2017, the Hamburg, Germany-based magazine Stern depicted Trump giving a Nazi salute and it also compared Trump to neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan. In the book Frankly, We Did Win This Election, authored by Michael C. Bender of The Wall Street Journal, recounts that White House Chief of Staff, John F. Kelly, was reportedly shocked by an alleged statement made by Trump that "Hitler did a lot of good things." Liz Harrington, Trump’s spokesperson, denied the claim, saying: "This is totally false. President Trump never said this. It is made-up fake news, probably by a general who was incompetent and was fired."[53] Kelly further stated in his book that Trump had asked him why his generals could not be loyal like Hitler's generals. According to the Ohio Capital Journal, quoting his roommate, politician Josh McLaurin, then-Republican candidate and senator-elect from Ohio, J. D. Vance, was said to have wondered whether Trump was "America's Hitler". Harvard University professor of government Daniel Ziblatt also drew similarities between Hitler's rise and Trump's.  Trump has also been compared to Narendra Modi,[58] and former aide Anthony Scaramucci also compared Trump to Benito Mussolini and Augusto Pinochet.

In a July 2021 piece for The Atlantic, George W. Bush's former speechwriter David Frum wrote that "Trump's no Hitler, obviously. But they share some ways of thinking. The past never repeats itself. But it offers warnings. It's time to start using the F-word again, not to defame—but to diagnose." For The Guardian, Nicholas Cohen wrote: "If Trump looks like a fascist and acts like a fascist, then maybe he is one. The F-word is one we are rightly wary of using, but how else to describe the disgraced president?" New York Magazine asked, "Is It Finally Time to Begin Calling Trumpism Fascist?" Dana Milbank also believed the insurrection qualified as fascist, writing in The Washington Post, "To call a person who endorses violence against the duly elected government a 'Republican' is itself Orwellian. More accurate words exist for such a person. One of them is 'fascist.'" Dylan Matthews writing in Vox quoted Sheri Berman as saying, "I saw Paxton's essay and of course respect him as an eminent scholar of fascism. But I can't agree with him on the fascism label."

The Guardian further reported on Trump's "stand back and stand by" directive during the 2020 United States presidential debates to the Proud Boys and it also made a note of the fact that he had made "positive remarks about far-right and white supremacist groups." During the 2020 debate, Biden asked Trump to condemn white supremacist groups, specifically the Proud Boys. Trump's response was interpreted by some as a call to arms. The United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack public hearings explored the relationships which existed between the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and Trump's allies, with evidence of coordination in the run-up to the Capitol attack.

In August 2022, President Biden referred to the "extreme MAGA agenda" as "semi-fascism". In the Battle for the Soul of the Nation speech September 1, Biden criticized the "extremism" and "blind loyalty" of Trump supporters, calling them a threat to democracy. He added that he did not consider a majority of Republicans to be MAGA Republicans.

On March 13, 2023, journalist James Risen reported that it was discovered that 2021 United States Capitol Attack attendee, Hatchet Speed, was planning to kidnap Jewish leaders, including the leaders of the ADL, and the philanthropist George Soros. Speed was working as a Pentagon Analyst at the time of Risen's investigation of him and his planned attack. Reportedly, he has praised Hitler as "one of the best people there has ever been on the earth".

And then there's this from 2017, hours after Charlottesville:

These are the three reasons fascism spread in 1930s America — and might spread again today

The violent white nationalist rally in Virginia has reawakened simmering fears of American fascism. But the roots of these feelings — and the militant organizations that promoted them — did not begin with the election of President Trump. The last time fascism was brazenly embraced was in the 1930s. The lessons of that crucial decade bear increasing relevance for modern American life. The three big factors that drove the spread of American fascism at that time are still relevant for America today.

Fascist ideas were quite popular in 1930s America

In the 1930s, fascist ideas were increasingly accepted. This was reflected in the energetic growth of Nazi organizations. Ku Klux Klan rallies were common and numerous; Trump’s own father was arrested at one such rally, reportedly while wearing a Klan outfit. A 1941 book found that more than 100 such organizations had formed since 1933.

The appeal of fascist ideas extended far beyond the fringe, reaching prominent citizens such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh went so far as to praise Adolf Hitler as “undoubtedly a great man.” In 1940, Lindbergh’s wife published a bestseller that called totalitarianism “The Wave of the Future” and an “ultimately good conception of humanity.”

At the time, Jews served the same role for U.S. fascists that immigrants, Muslims and other minorities serve today: a vague but malicious threat they believed to be undermining America’s greatness. Surveys of U.S. public opinion from the 1930s are a startling reminder of just how widespread these attitudes became. As late as July 1942, a Gallup poll showed that 1 in 6 Americans thought Hitler was “doing the right thing” to the Jews. A 1940 poll found that nearly a fifth of Americans saw Jews as a national “menace” — more than any other group, including Germans. Almost a third anticipated “a widespread campaign against the Jews” — a campaign that 12 percent of Americans were willing to support.

The careers of anti-Semitic celebrities such as Catholic Rev. Charles Coughlin reflected the popular appeal of fascist ideas. Father Coughlin, as he was known, enjoyed the second-largest radio audience in the country (after President Roosevelt’s fireside chats), frequently quoted Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and praised the Nazi quest for full employment and racial purity. He broke with Roosevelt in 1934, forming his own party, whose 1936 candidate received nearly 1 million votes. Coughlin was finally silenced by the Catholic Church in early 1942.

These voices welcoming fascism were not marginal radicals but mainstream writers, presidents of major associations and editors of popular journals. In his 1934 presidential address, the president of the American Political Science Association — the nation’s oldest and largest organization of political scientists — railed against “the dogma of universal suffrage” and argued for abolishing a democracy that allowed “the ignorant, the uninformed and the antisocial elements” to vote. If these reforms smacked of fascism, he concluded, then “we have already recognized that there is a large element of fascist doctrine and practice that we must appropriate.”

Three factors helped U.S. fascism spread

So what does the history of American fascism tell us about its resurgence? The good news is that the three major factors that drove its expansion are absent today.

The first was a major economic depression and social dislocation that undermined people’s confidence in democracy and led them to look for alternatives. As a U.S. economist complained in 1933, “democracy is neither very expert nor very quick to action” and cannot resolve “group and class conflicts easily.”

"Americans feeling an economic anxiety voted for a strong leader..."

The second factor was fear of communism, which led many leading intellectuals to embrace fascism as a bulwark against Bolshevism and as the lesser of two evils. As in Europe, worries about communism intensified fascism’s appeal in the U.S. “I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler,” argued popular Christian activist Frank Buchman in 1936, “who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of communism.”

"Obama is an evil genius bent on destroying capitalism so he can give your house, and your car, and your gun to undeserving brown people."

The third factor was the rise of Nazi Germany as an economic and military powerhouse. Hitler’s ascent began a long period of German recovery, economic expansion and the swift end of unemployment in that country. By 1939, Germany had a labor shortage of 2 million people, while industrial production had more than doubled. Generations of historians have debated whether the recovery was real, but the widespread perception of German success attracted admirers regardless of its reality.

"Just look at the strength of Putin and Xi and Kim..."

There could be a resurgence of fascism in the U.S.

Even though these three factors no longer exist, similar problems lurk under the surface of modern political life, problems that could conceivably drive a resurgence of fascist movements. The overall U.S. economy has been performing well, but levels of inequality continue to rise. Wide areas of America are increasingly mired in permanent unemployment and a massive drug epidemic. These are the sorts of economic conditions that drove fascist support in the 1930s; another major crisis like the Great Recession is likely to bolster nationalist appeals even more.

Few people worry about the communist threat today. Yet fear of communism has been replaced by fear of globalists and elite technocrats (still often tinged with anti-Semitism) who supposedly seek to undermine and control the lives of ordinary Americans. The recently uncovered National Security Council memo reflected these sentiments clearly, arguing that Trump’s opposition is made up of a cabal of Islamists, cultural Marxists and global bankers. The extreme right-wing blogger Mike Cernovich, who has been praised by Donald Trump Jr., recently published a cartoon showing national security adviser H.R. McMaster as a puppet manipulated by George Soros, who in turn was being manipulated by a monstrous green hand labeled “Rothschilds,” a historically wealthy Jewish family.

The third factor — the appearance of an ideological rival that seemed to outperform America’s corrupt democracy — is today reflected most clearly in fears over the rise of China. Over the past decade, numerous observers have argued that liberal democracy is being supplanted by the kind of state capitalism exemplified by China, in which a capitalist system of production is undergirded by state ownership and guidance, with little room for democracy.

Americans cannot be complacent about democracy

Over the 20th century, democracy spread from a few isolated outposts to most corners of the world. Today its superiority seems self-evident to people who have been steeped in its moral virtues and material successes. But over the past century, mere moral appeal has rarely been sufficient for its survival. It would be a convenient mistake to accept the victory of democracy as a historical morality play, the predestined triumph of good over evil.

For much of the 20th century, democracy’s success depended on the existence of powerful countries such as the United States, examples to be imitated. More than any appeal to freedom, democracy spread because it promised economic prosperity and political stability. But when democracies failed to deliver, as during the Great Depression, the tide of popular and elite opinion shifted just as readily and just as quickly against democratic institutions. The key lesson of the 20th century is that democracy is more fragile than we might like.

The Difference

One side says a woman has the right to make her own decisions about having babies or not having babies, while the other side insists that the government should step in and make the call on whether she can or can't continue a pregnancy, or even prevent one.

Papa Joe and his gang say it's up to the pregnant woman, and everybody else can STFU about it.

Trump and the blue-nosed, pinch-faced MAGA Taliban are arguing over how severe they want the punishments to be if anybody defies the restrictions on women.

So let's be clear on this

★ The Democrats are trying to find ways to re-established the rights of 170 million Americans now that SCOTUS has fucked them over with the Dodd decision.

★ Trump doesn't give one empty fuck about the issue - he cares nothing about doing what's right. He's negotiating - bargaining with women's rights. ie: How much can I get the Puritans to pay me in exchange for a promise to impose a nation-wide ban on abortion and contraceptives?

And remember, he's already floated a deal with the Dirty Fuels Cartel for $1 billion - and he's been talking it up.

Tempers flare as Trump reviews revised abortion plank for Republican platform

The former president wants the platform to endorse leaving the issue to the states rather than a federal ban in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s demise.

Donald Trump has begun to review draft language for the 2024 Republican platform that antiabortion leaders expect will abandon the party’s decades-long call to amend the U.S. Constitution to extend personhood protections to the unborn, according to multiple people involved with the discussions.

The escalating behind-the-scenes disagreement over the abortion language has become so tense and acrimonious in recent weeks that some social conservative leaders have issued public warnings of a coming split within Trump’s coalition. Others have started to discuss an effort to issue a “minority report” to the platform at the convention, according to the people involved, who like others for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.

Trump advisers, in turn, have been angered by the public pressure from antiabortion activists, according to people familiar with the campaign’s internal discussions. At the same time, Trump allies are not overly worried about the platform skirmish, because evangelicals strongly opposed to abortion have remained among his most fervent supporters regardless of his evolving positions on the issue.

“If the Trump campaign decides to remove national protections for the unborn in the GOP platform, it would be a miscalculation that would hurt party unity and destroy pro-life enthusiasm between now and the election,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are now just one business day away from the platform committee meeting and no assurances have been made. Instead, every indication is that the campaign will muscle through changes behind closed doors.”

Trump advisers — who selected the platform committee’s delegates — have made clear in private discussions that they want a shorter platform document, with abortion language consistent with Trump’s current position, multiple people said.

Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide, Trump waffled on whether he would support a federal abortion ban. But Trump now says he wants each state to make its own decision on abortion regulation, while resisting calls for new federal limits that he once supported.

“Many states will be different. Many will have a different number of weeks, or some will have [sic] more conservative than others,” he said in April. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people.”

Trump allies have argued that letting states decide their own abortion limitations helps the former president seem more moderate on the issue. Democrats contend that, instead, it weds Trump to the most extreme abortion limits in the country, including some states that have enacted near-total bans on the procedure.

In the face of the activist backlash, Trump’s advisers have barred the press and C-SPAN cameras from next week’s scheduled meetings of the platform committee, a break in tradition that has alarmed some delegates. Members of the Republican National Committee not directly participating in the platform debate will be able to attend the meetings, which start Sunday afternoon at the Baird Center in Milwaukee, with a meeting to offer amendments scheduled for Tuesday.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a platform committee member, wrote a letter Monday to RNC Chairman Michael Whatley dismissing the private discussions as “stalling tactics” by Trump advisers. He called the decision to restrict the press from the platform committee discussions “un-American,” and warned that the platform could be watered down to “a few pages of meaningless, poll-tested talking points.”

“We reach consensus by presenting our ideas and playing by the rules. And I am very concerned about closing down the process,” Perkins said Thursday. “The Republican Party should not be operating as we point out the left so often does — wanting to silence opposition.”

The Trump campaign said the final abortion language has not been determined. Some campaign officials have suggested that the eventual language will appease many antiabortion activists.

“The Platform Committee has yet to convene to discuss what language should be in the final document,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said in a statement.

Trump signed a letter to antiabortion leaders during his 2016 campaign promising to support the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” federal legislation that would have outlawed abortion nationwide after 20 weeks of gestation with some exceptions. He supported that legislation in his first term, but his policy changed after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

Antiabortion activists reject the idea that the high court’s reversal changes the need for federal legislation or a constitutional amendment process, as they have expanded their efforts to challenge federal regulatory approval of abortion medication.

They argue that a constitutional amendment on abortion — a feature of the GOP platform since the 1980s — can be seen as a state issue, since any amendment would ultimately need to be ratified by at least 38 of the 50 states. They also say that Trump’s recent statements on abortion fail to address the abortions performed in more liberal states that allow the procedure with relatively few limitations.

Eight antiabortion and social conservative leaders wrote a June 10 letter to Trump demanding that the platform include support for federal legislative limits on abortion, and it contained the following sentence: “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth.”

“This is the language that both you and Ronald Reagan ran on and won,” the leaders wrote. Among the signatories were Dannenfelser, Perkins, Faith and Freedom Coalition President Ralph Reed and Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America.

One antiabortion activist involved in the discussion with Trump’s team said there has been little recent communication with antiabortion leaders beyond broad assurances that the platform “will be fine, and it will be pro-life.”

“Our posture was, ‘Let’s fix this behind the scenes,’” this activist said. “Once it became more apparent to us that they didn’t want to work with us and seemed inclined to want to pick a fight with us, we have been more vocal.”

And it's not just women. These assholes are coming for the whole shebang.

Some RNC members are also concerned that the Trump team will back away from the 2016 platform’s declaration that denounced the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision allowing same-sex couples to marry. The previous platform called marriage between one man and one woman “the foundation for a free society” that “has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values.”

Trump advisers say privately that they do not want a fight over same-sex marriage and consider it a settled issue not worth re-litigating, according to people familiar with the conversations.

“It would not be a smart move to define it any other way,” one RNC member said of marriage. “I’m a little bit concerned about what might transpire.”

Find The Bad Guys

... and punch 'em in the face.

What We're Up Against

The problem with the title - "What We're Up Against" - is that most Trump supporters you find in the wild really aren't as cult-captured as the devotees you're likely to find at one of his rallies.

That said, don't expect the guy at the bar to be convinced - or to admit to it anyway. There's enormous peer pressure to stay in lockstep against anything "them dirty libruls are tellin' ya."

But - and it's a big one - cuz I like big buts (sorry) - one of the things driving the MAGA rubes to remain refractory and recalcitrant is the insistence on the part of the ruling minority mob that Trump is the be-all and end-all, and anybody caught disagreeing with the dogma will be shunned.

Don't think - just follow

Working It Out

We're supposed to help ourselves - do for ourselves - fend for ourselves - but Republicans have been busy bitching about "moochers", while trying pretty hard to make it so we can't get together with like-minded neighbors to do things that help us.

And, of course, Republicans haven't been shy about helping themselves, amiright? (sorry)

And BTW, in a democracy, the people are the government - at least in this democracy - that's what it says right up front there in the Constitution.

So we're the government, and Republicans have spent years telling us we should hate the government, and not trust the government, and fuck the gubmint - seems like they don't really like us. Why should we keep them around?

Makes a lot more sense once you look at it from slightly metaphoric angle:

Signs of an Abusive Relationship
While every abusive relationship will involve different methods of control, the underlying themes are the same. An abusive relationship will involve one party using their power over the other party to prevent them from doing anything except what the abusive person wants. Here are some of the signs to watch out for:

Communication Monitoring

People who are abusive may try to monitor your communication with other people. They may ask to read your texts and emails, log into your devices without permission, or even install tracking software to keep tabs on your social life. They will frequently use this against you later.

Isolation

Abusive partners also commonly isolate the people they abuse. The abusive person may spread lies about you, or they may try to convince you that your family and friends don’t actually like you. Either way, the goal is to cut off your support systems that could otherwise help you leave the relationship.

Financial Control

In some abusive relationships, the abusive party will work to remove their partner’s control over their own finances. This is intended to make it harder for the abused person to leave the relationship. The abusive person may cut off your access to your accounts, hide information about your financial situation, or try to make you quit your job.

Coercion

Another common tactic of abuse is to force you to do things you don’t want to do, whether through begging, threats, force, or emotional manipulation. This can include sexual activities, but it can also include any other behavior you do not want to do. Abusive people may also use coercion to keep you in the relationship if you try to leave.

Emotional Manipulation

One of the most common types of abuse is emotional abuse. This can include:

• Insulting you
• Humiliating you in front of others
• Making you feel like you’re “crazy”
• Calling you names
• Making you feel guilty for normal activities

Healthy relationships involve both partners building each other up. Abusive relationships involve one party tearing the other down.

Physical Violence

Finally, physical violence is the most well-known sign of an abusive relationship. If your partner ever hits you or hurts you in any way, your relationship is likely abusive.

How To Get Out Of An Abusive Relationship.

Hangin' Out

Felons aren't allowed to hang out with other felons.

Republicans are hanging out with a felon, who's hanging out with his fellow felons.

1. GUILTY
2. GUILTY
3. GUILTY
4. GUILTY
5. GUILTY
6. GUILTY
7. GUILTY
8. GUILTY
9. GUILTY
10. GUILTY
11. GUILTY
12. GUILTY
13. GUILTY
14. GUILTY
15. GUILTY
16. GUILTY
17. GUILTY
18. GUILTY
19. GUILTY
20. GUILTY
21. GUILTY
22. GUILTY
23. GUILTY
24. GUILTY
25. GUILTY
26. GUILTY
27. GUILTY
28. GUILTY
29. GUILTY
30. GUILTY
31. GUILTY
32. GUILTY
33. GUILTY
34. GUILTY

Today's Beau

Democrats and Liberals and Progressives - every clear-thinking normal human being - warned us that the Republicans wouldn't stop at Roe v Wade. 

They all warned us that the Republicans would next target contraception.

Guess what.

Glenn Youngkin is a smiling hyena

Moskowitz Strikes Again